New housing bill in New Jersey is a fixer-upper

Getty ImagesA new bill in New Jersey would deem a house with a $600,000 price tag as affordable housing.

Would you consider a $600,000 home to be affordable housing? A new bill making its way through the Legislature does.

And that’s just one sign that this bill needs repairs before it is approved. Lawmakers are right to revamp the existing law, which is monstrously complex and only marginally effective.
Their general approach is sensible. Towns and cities that already have enough affordable housing would be mostly left alone. Included in that are cities in which more than 50 percent of schoolchildren receive free or reduced lunches, an indication that low-cost housing is in place already. They will only have to rehab some existing housing. Towns that are slightly better off would face slightly tougher obligations.

But the bill is not tough enough on towns that don’t have much affordable housing at all. It requires developers who build complexes with at least 10 units to set aside 10 percent of the total for affordable housing, or to pay a fee. But the towns can ignore that and instead zone at least 20 percent of their land for “affordable” housing that’s not really affordable.
The standard is that a family earning 150 percent of the regional median income should be able to live in that “affordable” housing. In places like Middlesex and Somerset counties, where the median income is just over $100,000, that means a house costing $600,000 would be deemed affordable.

That is not what the Supreme Court had in mind when it insisted that towns and cities in this state provide an opportunity for affordable housing. It’s not even close.
There is still time for lawmakers to get it right. For starters, the Legislature needs to establish a more reasonable standard for what constitutes affordable.